


Tumbling-with tripping steps we fall

by gabsrambles



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:37:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: Two years ago, Kara left National City behind.Started as a prompt, and now ongoing.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been years, and missing her is a twist in Kara’s gut that’s ever present. A wrenching that could pull her apart if she let it. National City hasn’t changed at all. The same fast pace. The bagel store on the corner that Kara went to more times than she can count.

They did something magic with cream cheese.

But the front is painted differently. Subtle. But it’s not as it was.

Yet the big things? They’re the same.

And if nothing big has changed, that means that _Lena’s_  still here.

L-Corp looks the same. It rises above her and scrapes the sky and Kara itches with the urge to do the same. To launch off the ground and disappear into the clouds and avoid all this. It’s a little too much and her throat hurts with the ache that’s not left since she’s arrived.

Leaving was the both hardest and easiest thing she’s ever done.

Alex hasn’t forgiven her for it. They’re fine, of course. They always will be. But she doesn’t get it and thinks Kara’s reasons make no sense at all. But Kara can never forgive herself for the fact someone figured out who she really was and traced their way to Alex. After it all, the fight that had rattled the city that Kara had so almost lost, Alex had been in hospital for over a week, contusions and broken bones and a bleed in her brain that required surgery. 

Yet still she doesn’t understand why Kara left.

Unlike Lena. Who had given Kara this small smile and stepped back as if she’d always expected Kara to leave her. The words had trickled out, stuck on repeat, that no one knew about them and Kara had to leave before she put more people in danger. She has no idea of Lena heard the reasons, or if she simply heard excuses.

There’d been something in her eye that Kara has carried with her since she turned on her heel and walked away before she couldn’t find the ability to do so.

The receptionist is different. That’s one thing to note for change. A stamp, some proof, to show the years that have passed.

But it doesn’t matter that this one doesn’t know her. Kara has an appointment set up, arranged by the news station she’s been sent by. A splashing, multiple paged article to write. Huge, for her. An expose of all the cities overran with Superheroes and aliens alike, and those that work with and against them.

L-Corp was an obvious choice for an interview. One Kara had tried to provide alternatives for and been told to shut up and go interview.

The receptionist gives Kara a bland smile and leads the way to Lena’s office.

It’s so tempting, to say she doesn’t need it. To point out that Kara knows the way like the back of her hand, like the constellations that glittered over her roof on Krypton.

But she just adjusts her glasses, and follows quietly.

It’s strange, though, to be led there. To not just throw the receptionist a beaming smile and walk through to Lena’s office. To be greeted by that slow grin, those eyes the colour of kryptonite.

Kara would have been lost in them, if her life had let her.

The receptionist lets Kara in and the door closes quietly behind her and Kara thinks her heart may have stopped in her chest, the air sucked from the room.

Lena’s at her desk, the light spilling behind her and it could have been any day from before. It’s as if Kara can walk up and lean over her desk, her palms flat on the surface and let a grin unfurl as Lena’s eyes fall to the gaping of her shirt and then back up to meet her gaze. Like Lena may stand and meet her part way, a kiss dropped on Kara’s cheek and a breathy complaint of just how _busy_  she is that day. Or better yet, a hand in her own that tugs her to the sofa, and thighs sliding either side of Kara’s hips, fingers plucking at her buttons and a laugh falling from lips that are already on her neck.

But it’s not that time.

Instead, Lena gives a smile that’s polite. Distant. Kara doesn’t want to listen in, but she hears the way Lena’s heart gallops in her chest, the only sign she’s not completely put together.

“Kara.” Lena stands up, her fingers steepling on the desk as she leans against it. She gives a smile that’s nothing like the radiance Kara was once used to. “I imagine you’re tired after your trip. Shall we get started?”

And the traitor in Kara’s mind wants to say no. Wants to walk forward and push Lena against the window and kiss her until they both forget everything that happened. To get lost in the gasp that Lena would give into the shell of Kara’s ear.

“Of course.” Kara takes a seat and Lena leans back in her own. She’s still smiling. Tight, but polite. “How have you been?”

Lena cocks her head. “The business is going well. but I’m sure your questions will cover that?”

So Kara takes the hint, and launches into the interview. Questions about the advancements in the technology they have, the partnership with the DEO. L-Corps past association with Supergirl, that they both talk about like Lena doesn’t know who she really is. 

And all the while, Kara grips her pen so tight she almost snaps it. She shakes with the need to close the gap and whisper just how sorry she is, just how much she wishes the world was a different place.

But she doesn’t.

And Lena, except for the heart rate that never slows, shows nothing. She answers like a professional. Like she never ran her lips over Kara’s belly at this very desk and fell to her knees between Kara’s legs. Like she’d never dragged Kara outside at two am to see the stars splayed out in the sky, just visible, and kissed her with lips that tasted like champagne. Like she’d never shuddered against Kara’s hand, her teeth on Kara’s shoulder in an effort to be quiet.

It’s like it never happened.

It’s Kara who feels herself falling apart in her chair, while Lena is unaffected opposite her.

Kara nods once, and caps her pen. Her vision is blurry and that lump is growing in her throat. The ache that’s been there since she arrived is manifesting into something she can’t swallow down and drown. 

She has no right to do this; she’s the one who left.

“Great. Thank you.” And her voice is cracking, a betrayal. So she stands and turns to go. “Thanks for your time, Lena.”

Her fingers are trembling and Kara may just fall to pieces right there. 

“Kara.”

Her voice is a whisper, but it makes Kara freeze in the middle of the office. Her lip trembles along with her fingers and Kara closes her eyes. It’s too hard, to be so close to her. She doesn’t turn around.

“Kara.”

The voice is closer but still Kara just stays where she is. She should leave. She did this, she made this mess. She did it to keep Lena safe, to keep everyone around her safe, but still she did it. Left her own heart shredded and in this very office and moved cities away. So she has no right to fall apart and expect Lena Luthor to put her back together. It’s too unfair.

“Look at me.” Lena’s in front of her and Kara shakes her head. “Please.”

She can’t. If she does, Kara will have to leave her behind again and even she may not have the strength to do it.

Lena’s fingers graze her cheek and Kara hates herself, because she tilts her face into the touch, and Lena cups her cheek, her palm warm and soft and if Kara turned her head just slightly, she could kiss the inside of her wrist.

She smells sweet, there. Kara remembers.

But instead she swallows and hopes the tears in her eyes don’t leak out.

“Kara.” The words wash over her lips and Kara wants to breathe them in and keep them with her forever. To freshen the memories she taunts herself with every night. “Please don’t cry.”

And damn it, she is.

Lips press against her own and everything in Kara crumbles. Her hands come up and thread through Lena’s hair and their lips part, tongues grazing and Kara has missed this in a way she can’t even express.

That ache in her throat hasn’t gone and Lena fingers are bunched around her shirt, pulling Kara in as tight as she can. She smells the same, and kisses the same and Lena is everything is ever was and everything Kara has ever wanted. Her hand wraps around the back of Kara’s neck like it always did, even if it’s tinged with a desperation, now.

And with a sob in her chest, Kara remembers the words Lena whispered to her, once, in Kara’s apartment. The room was washed in an orange light, the sun rising and both exhausted, languid, their limbs entwined and sweat still cooling on their skin. Nothing but contentment hummed through Kara’s blood, the press of the day ahead a distant thought. Lena had laughed, low and joyous into her neck and Kara and grinned utterly lazily. 

“What?” she’d asked.

Lena had dropped a kiss to the spot behind Kara’s ear that always made her breathing hitch. “I didn’t think I’d find this,” she whispered.

And before Kara could ask what she’d meant, Lena had rolled on top of her, and made Kara forget she even had a question.

But Kara remembers, now.

Kara pulls back from the kiss, just barely, and Lena lets their foreheads rest together. And, finally, Kara opens her eyes. Green dazzles her, leaches everything else away. 

Lena Luthor has always been her weakness.

“I–I have to go,” Kara’s voice is raw, hoarse. She sounds nothing like herself.

Because she does have to go. She’s stuck this out for years, and she can’t stop now. Lena’s cheeks are slashed with pink, her lips kissed swollen, and Kara wants to fall into her and forget everything that’s happened.

That memory is thick in her mind and she doesn’t want to break Lena another time.

So Kara steps past her and walks out, and hates the shuddering breath she can hear being drawn behind her as she shuts the door.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I’m making this an ongoing thing I’ll add to over time. I asked people what they'd like a continuation of and this one was mentioned.
> 
> It will be oneshots in this verse in which Kara left the city. I may include ones that are out of chronological order, so flashbacks etc, specific moments--feel free to request something. Please note I know it’s doubtful Kara would ever leave her sister behind due to a big moral reason. I’ll explore it a bit more in this, but yeah, Kara leaving? Not the most likely. This is just something I wrote for fun.

 

There is a storm.

Or was, hours before.

Sheets and sheets of rain fell, leaving the world soggy, the streets slathered in puddles. Water flew up around tyres and trees slicked off fat heavy drops onto the pavement. 

It is a day for inside. For steaming windows and steaming coffee cups and woollen socks piled around ankles. The smell of paper in books and the crinkle of sheets and blankets as bodies shifted and settled in. The soft padding of footsteps going from the couch or the bed to the kitchen and back. The hum of a radiator. The sound of the rain thundering at the glass and nothing but hours ahead of cosiness.

Instead, Lena’s standing before a crowded room in a foreign city, hundreds upon hundreds of eyes blinking up at her as she lays bare L-Corp’s latest technology with a smooth voice and not even a tremble to her fingers.

Exhaustion is heavy in her bones, jetlag still biting at her eyes. The last three days have been a blur of a ridiculously long flight and the whirlwind of the conference in Tokyo. It wraps up after tomorrow and she’ll be straight back on a flight home to be back at work the next day. She’s dreading the entire ordeal.

But still, when someone broaches a question she isn’t prepared for, she smiles and answers it as if she’s been expecting it.

She is, after all, phenomenal at her job, regardless of just how badly she wants to sleep.

Someone expresses doubts and Lena eyes him down from the podium and flicks to the next page of her presentation screen with the click of a button, the topic he brought up addressed there.

All she’s done is present, network, and rub shoulders with some of the brightest minds in the world.

Her introverted brain is going to spend the next weekend holed up alone getting over this human hangover.

Since the conference winds tomorrow, though, there’s a dinner she’s obliged to attend dominating her coming evening. Though it’s better than sitting in her hotel room, loneliness that conflicts with her people exhaustion gnawing at her insides until she’s reaching for the bottle of whiskey the hotel provided as a gift.

She’s at the end of the presentation, and questions are being asked rapidly, good ones. Well thought out ones. Ones that push her and Lena throws herself into answering them. Hands are starting to come down now and her gaze sweeps the room and she freezes, gaze on one person, leaning against the back wall so casually, pen and paper out.

Kara. Eyes intent on her and head cocked, pen hovering over the pad.

Kara

In Tokyo.

Lena spends too much time, some days, coiled like she’s worried she’ll run into her. She never knows when Kara’s visiting the city, and some days she just gets this _feeling_. She never actually sees her, but the thought is there. That, or Supergirl will be on the news. Always in different cities. Kara’s plan to put Kara Danvers’ roots down in another city, but spread Supergirl’s talents all over the place to avoid another incidence like what happened with her sister clear. Supergirl’s been seen all over the country now, all of the world. The earthquake that hit Italy just a few months ago, the tsunami, the forest fires.

Lena is braced for that. Expected. When there’s a clear shot on her screen of Supergirl hovering above, her piercing blue gaze hitting Lena so deep it’s as if she’s with her again, Lena at least knows that feeling is coming.

The last year it’s been…less. Because Lena Luthor is over Kara Danvers. It’s been three years since she left. A year since she showed up for that interview and Kara had looked so broken and Lena had _tried_ again. Had kissed her, even as every part of her screamed not to.

And Kara had walked away.

Again.

Leaving Lena humiliated, angry, and, mostly, sad, with the taste of possibility, of _could have beens_ on her tongue.

And so Lena actively got over Kara Danvers. It’s done.

It’s just the sight of her is still always like a slap. One that almost makes her take a step back at the shock of the sting of it.

But that doesn’t mean anything.

But if other times are like a slap, this time is like a punch from Kara’s own fist.

Hard, and in the gut, and for the first time, Lena falters. Her words stutter and she feels as if her mouth has gone dry. And Kara just blinks at her, and even from so far away, Lena knows how blue her eyes will be.

How blue they are when she’s raging as Supergirl, or talking someone down as the same, when she’s light and airy and laughing on Lena’s desk, tugging Lena between her legs for a kiss, how dark they get when awash with stars and the tinge in them when sunrise hits them just right.

The edge in that blue when Kara squared her jaw and walked out of Lena’s apartment, the sound of the door not loud enough to smother the thundering of Lena’s heart as she stared at it in disbelief that she didn’t think she should really feel. Because doesn’t everyone leave, in the end?

The blue across her desk, in person after two years. That blue, tear-filled, when she had no _right_ to be, even as Lena ignored that thought and tried to kiss it away anyway.

Lena swallows, straightens her shoulders, and tears her gaze away.

It’s none of her business why Kara Danvers is in Tokyo.

They dated for a few months, and then Kara broke her he—broke her, and left for stupid noble reasons that didn’t even make sense.

She doesn’t even care why Kara’s here.

Her fingers are only trembling because she’s tired.

It wraps up quickly, the podium cleared for the next panel, one Lena had wanted to watch but now couldn’t even think about sitting through. That trembling isn’t gone and Kara is suddenly back, in her thoughts, in her mind, in the thumping of her heart against her ribs and Lena hates it. It makes no sense. They were hardly together.

Never mind the feeling Lena had, that one morning as dawn broke over them and their skin shone with sweat and Lena had ran her tongue down Kara’s spine, the taste of salt and _her_ everything. That feeling had welled up in her chest, had broken over her tongue.

She’d never thought she’d have that.

But Kara left two days later, and Lena realised that _that_ was not meant for her.

She misses Kara though.

That doesn’t have to mean anything.

Because before they started their ill-advised attempt at dating, they’d been friends. Uncomplicated friends, too. Not the type she had in that vapid boarding school. A friend who showed up when she was sad. One who appeared at her office with doughnuts. Who called to see how she was. Who pulled laughter from Lena like she was made for it.

So Lena squares her shoulders and goes anywhere she imagines journalists wont. Behind the scenes, speaking with organisers, smaller panels, the show room, huge and never ending. The rep at the booth for L-Corp jumps when she sees Lena and tries to look busy.

She doesn’t see Kara again in the afternoon, but that’s not because she’s looking for her. And even if she _is_ looking for her—which she’s not—it’s been years. They can be friends.

So she’s almost relaxed by the time the dinner’s rolled around and half convinced herself she imagined Kara and she was never there at all.

Rooms filled with so many people get dull. Everyone wants to talk to the most important in the room and, with how fast L-Corp is advancing in tech, that is often Lena. Which means endless conversation and smiling and acting like she hasn’t had this conversation five times. It’s times like this that she wishes she did what most did and brought an assistant with her. Much easier to deflect. And, finally, it’s after nine and she is so close to being able to escape. She’s near the door, the current conversation is winding down and Lena can basically hear her bed calling her.

But then someone is touching her arm softly and Lena’s smile is plastered on her face as she turns to greet them, hoping her frustration doesn’t show in her eyes.

And all she sees is blue.

Kara is mere feet away, her fingers adjusting her glasses and that sheepish look on her face. An expression Lena knows. Like so many others. A year has barely changed her. But then it wouldn’t: she’s Kryptonian, and will always look youthful, soaked in sunshine and stars in her hair.

In spite of herself, Lena’s breath catches in her chest and the smile slowly melts. She blinks and Kara’s lips curl up.

“Hey.”

Hey? That’s what they’re reduced to.

Lena swallows and reminds herself that, yes, that is what they are now. Two people who were friends for half a year, then something more for a few months. Two people who slept together, once upon a time.

Mediocre. Mundane.

Though that is nothing like what Lena feels now.

And she swallows it down.

Because she is over Kara Danvers. They are not star crossed lovers, doomed, their destiny painted in the skies like gods. It’s been three years, one kiss that tasted like salt all they’ve exchanged in that time. Their story is nothing.

“Hi.” Lena hates that she breathes it.

Kara adjusts her glasses again and it’s so familiar that an ache throbs in Lena’s chest. “I, uh, was in town. And I saw you were speaking.”

“You were in town?” Like saying you were in the neighbourhood. “This is Tokyo.”

Lena has no idea where the person she was speaking to has gone. Space has fluctuated, narrowed, and all she sees is Kara. And she hates it.

Kara’s lips quirk, almost shy, almost like she’s laughing at herself. “Yeah, you know. Around.”

She gestures with her hands, painted with awkward, and it’s again so familiar Lena wonders how three years hasn’t dimmed that.

Not that it matters. Lena is over it. She sucks in a breath. Fortifies herself. She’s over it. She can do this.

Just two people who had a connection once upon a time running into each other. Nothing special. Ordinary, really.

“Just around Tokyo?”

“I’m covering a story.”

Lena smiles then, and it doesn’t feel fake. “You’re getting sent to Tokyo to cover stories? Kara. That’s, that’s incredible.”

Her cheeks go pink, and it’s so fast Lena wants to smirk but that overwhelmed feeling in her chest won’t let her.

“Yeah, well, I wrote a piece about six months ago that got some notice and this story came up here and I think my boss wanted to take a chance.”

“I read that piece. It got more than ‘some notice’.”

As it should have. It had been a piece that made _everyone_ sit up and take notice. One that had made Lena a little smug—she’d always known that Kara was a reporter. Pride bloomed in her chest when she’d first read it. It was articulate. It was scathing. It was loud. It was amazing.

When Kara just shrugs and shifts from foot to foot, curiosity wins out and Lena asks, “Can I ask what the story is about?”

Kara leans forward, her hands clasped behind her back and something playful in her eye. Her hair falls around her face and Lena is hit with the smell of her, the sweetness of her shampoo. Her head almost swims.

“It’s all top secret, I’m afraid,” Kara says in an exaggerated whisper.

It’s playful. Delightful. And it leaves a pang behind of longing, for what once was and is gone now.

And with the way her heart speeds up, Lena needs to tell Kara it’s late. That she has to go. That stopping by was nice of her, but Lena has an early morning followed by a flight immediately after and she needs to sleep. That she is too unprepared for this, so far from home, the chances of seeing Kara so minimal, that she wants to go upstairs and pretend it didn’t happen.

Instead, she asks, “Do you want to grab a drink?”

And Kara’s eyebrows rise, quickly, before she’s leaning back and nodding. “I’d love that.”

So genuine. She doesn’t get to this. Like she shouldn’t have been able to do that last interview in Lena’s office.

Rather than going back into the dinner, where drinks are flowing, Lena asks. “Are you staying near here?”

“Around the corner.”

“Does the hotel have a bar?”

And, help her, Kara blinks again and nods. “It does.”

They walk side by side, the pavement still smelling like warm rain, and their shoulders brush, but so slightly Lena wonders if it’s real. The dinner was at her hotel, at the same hotel hosting the conference, and it has a perfectly good bar. She has no idea, really why she suggested Kara’s instead.

Different ground?

Kara’s never been that great at silence in moments like these. But it seems like even she isn’t sure what to say. Their shoulders brush again and the heat of Kara’s arm is palpable even through her coat. Always warm.

She’s always been like that.

That reminder is too much.

There’s a lump in Lena’s throat she doesn’t want there. It doesn’t belong. Not when it’s been three years. Not when she’s over Kara Danvers.

Lena stops in the street. It’s the middle of the week, getting late, the street is mostly clear. Lights are everywhere and the sky overhead, even if it wasn’t still rolling with clouds, is barely able to be seen. The light pollution too much.

Kara turns a step ahead and cocks her head.

"I don’t want a drink,” Lena says.

Kara’s shoulders dip, just slightly, disappointment clear even as she tries to it, with a smile, painted at the edges with sadness, a well in her eyes. “That’s okay.”

Lena nods, once. She can’t do this. “I…”

Excuses die on her tongue. She has nothing. No words. She can’t say it out loud. That she’s over her. That she doesn’t want to get a drink and play catch up.

But she can’t say that without explaining _why_.

Not when Lena doesn’t even know why herself.

“It’s okay.” Kara’s words are a rush. “It’s fine. I just, I stopped by because I wanted to see you speak. The presentation was amazing. You were amazing.” She smiles still, and the tinge of sorrow makes something swell in Lena’s throat. Kara wears sadness of she was born to it. Like she knows nothing else. It slips away at times, but rises up so easily. Lena was slowly learning why, before. Bits and pieces of Kara’s story coming out. Of things too heavy for mere mortals to wear, but Kara shouldered like there was nothing else she would rather do.

Lena never got to complete the puzzle that is Kara Danvers. It wasn’t hers to finish. Kara made that clear when she walked away.

“I didn’t expect you to want to catch up.” Kara is staring at her so openly.

Lena nods. “I should go.”

There’s a moment then, that Lena can see everything Kara wants to say building in her eyes, on her lips, in the set of her posture. Kara takes the tiniest step forward, as if to start speaking, to say something, to offer anything. And Lena just watches her until Kara presses her lips together into a grim smile and nods.

Kara holds out her hand, formally, as if to shake, and Lena rolls her eyes, stepping forward and into a hug before she can think twice. It’s only a moment before Kara’s arms are around her. Strong and warm and Lena doesn’t mean to bury her face in the crook of her neck. She doesn’t expect the overwhelming feeling of how much she remembers just how well she fit there. The smell of her the same. The softness of her skin and the hitch of Kara’s breath all how it always was. None of this is what she means to do, and instead of pulling back, stepping away and going to the safety of her room she stays there.

For a beat too long.

A beat that isn’t friendly. Isn’t something you do with an ex from three years ago who doesn’t have a constellation joined with yours.

Kara turns her head, just a little, her nose in Lena’s hair. Lena pulls back slowly, her cheek against Kara’s, warm and smooth and her hands thread in Kara’s hair. The corners of their mouths brush and for the briefest moment, Lena thinks of stepping back. There’s no line been crossed yet. Warm breath just puffs against her cheek and she needs to leave.

Instead she kisses Kara.

Melts into it.

Pushes her backwards so her back hits a rough brick wall and presses flush against her. Thighs against thighs and her tongue’s in Kara’s mouth, fingers tugging at her hair.

And Kara?

Kara kisses her back like she’s been starved for oxygen and Lena is the first she’s had in years. Their last kiss left an aching melancholy in Lena for days, a sob in her chest that built and exploded when Kara had closed the door behind her.

This one fills her with need, any melancholy she knows is there, too, buried under it.

“Where is your hotel?” Lena’s words are said with millimetres of space between their lips and Kara kisses her again before she answers, her lips soft and demanding, pliant and everything. She pulls back like it hurts her, her head against the all.

“Just a few doors down.”

Their fingers lace together and Kara leads the way, Lena unable to focus on anything but the desire to kiss her again. To run her lips down her neck. To flick her tongue at her collarbones, over her breast, against the soft skin of her stomach.

The small voice in the back of her head that is yelling at her that this is stupid is getting louder as Kara presses the button for the elevator.

But then they’re inside, and it’s empty, and it’s Lena with her back against the wall once Kara’s hit the button for her floor. Hands are in her hair and she’s caught in an inescapable feeling of wanting to sob into the kiss and rend herself away and leave, protect what’s left of herself, and between wanting to fall into it and never leave.

They make their way down the corridor with hands slipping under each other’s shirts and coats, and lips desperate on each other. Lena’s against the door and Kara never breaks the kiss as she fumbles for her card and swipes them in.

Kara kisses the same.

She tastes the same.

She moans into Lena’s mouth like she always used to when Lena scrapes her nails gently up her spine. She still chases Lena’s lips with a low whine when she pulls back to tug Kara’s coat off, her shirt sending her hair wild. Everything is the same and somehow that is worse and Lena needs this to be different, somehow. She needs it not to set off that ache in her stomach like it always has. Part of her wishes it would fizzle. That electricity wouldn’t shoot through her and leave a throb between her legs when Kara’s teeth graze her neck, when her hands finally tug Lena’s bra free and drop it carelessly on the ground and her lips wrap around Lena’s nipple as if she remembers exactly how Lena likes this.

It shouldn’t be like this. Because Kara left her twice and Lena is over her.

That thought makes her push Kara down to the bed, Lena’s thighs sliding either side of her hips. Their clothes are a haphazard trail leading to the bed and Kara’s hands are sliding hot trails from her knees to her waist. When Lena rocks, she presses against Kara’s stomach, and Lena can feel how wet she is against Kara’s skin and swallows Kara’s hot moan.

How much she needs this, when really she shouldn’t.

Kara’s head falls back and Lena takes the opportunity to trail her lips down her neck, to bite at her pulse. Kara’s fingers grip her hips and then loosen, and Lena remembers then, like a shock, Kara telling her how much she has to concentrate on not hurting people, all the time.

She rocks again, pushing on Kara’s shoulders until she’s laying down. Fingers are in her hair, pushing at her and she moves down Kara’s body as if three years haven’t passed. The carpet is rough on her knees, and Lena sinks into it, hopes it will burn away the nostalgia in her throat, the desperation that’s crawling at her fingers tips. Kara’s hipbone, with Lena’s lips run over it, still make her jump and she’s so wet Lena throbs again, between her legs, and Kara tastes exactly like she always did.

Kara has always liked it a little rough. A little fast. It doesn’t take long until she’s pulling Lena up her body, asking for “More” in a gasping breath and kissing the taste of herself off of Lena’s lips with three fingers still inside of her.

Somehow, Kara manages to nudge Lena’s hips either side of her and her hand slips between Lena’s legs, matching the rhythm Lena herself has set. At just the touch of Lena, Kara comes undone, her hips chasing Lena’s fingers even as her own don’t falter.

It’s everything Lena hasn’t let herself think of in years.

And it doesn’t stop just there, when it should never have even started.

Hours of Kara’s tongue and hand and thighs. Of running her tongue up Kara’s back like she always used to, Kara arching into the touch and shuddering. Letting her breath wash over the back of Kara’s neck as Lena grinds into her ass.

Of Kara’s eyes, a shattering blue, looking up at her from between Lena’s legs. Of the curve of her lips when Lena comes again, her hair a limp and sweaty mess, tousled from Kara’s fingers and from pillows.

Of her forehead pressed into the mattress, Kara draped over her back and fingers thrusting with the rocking of Lena’s hips, her breath hot and panting in Lena’s ear.

Her thighs are burning by the time the glowing clock reads three am. Kara’s forehead presses into her neck, their thighs between each other’s legs and sticky with each other. Kara’s almost asleep and Lena feels, suddenly, like she can’t breathe. As if all the air is trapped in her lungs.

That lump is splintering in her throat. Welling and welling and Lena has _missed_ this in ways she can’t even put into words.

Because nothing has changed.

Kara is still Kara, which means Kara is still Supergirl. Which means Kara is still the Kara that has walked away from her twice.

So Lena slips out of the bed and starts tugging on clothes. The rustle of the sheets doesn’t even make her turn until she’s eventually pulled her coat on. When she turns, Kara’s sitting up, the sheet held to her chest, wide eyes staring straight at her.

Light from the window washes right over her, slightly silver, and Lena could pretend it’s moonlight. That this woman who fell from the sky dragging space and all its sad stories and failings with her is soaked in what she knows.

Because there is the Kara who has sunshine in her eyes and glows with it, who takes it on like a battery and uses it to save the world. Forever the battered warrior, the saviour. The one who smiles and doles out sage advice and helps people with every turn. And there’s the Kara who watches the stars with a longing on her features Lena wants to capture. Who breathes starlight and carries the entire history of a planet on her shoulders.

Lena doesn’t know which Kara keeps leaving her.

That swelling in her chest hasn’t gone, and it swells even more, an ache in her throat,

And before Kara can leave _her_ again, Lena grabs her bag and turns around, walking out the door with her shoulders back and her jaw clenched.

 


End file.
